Bucky called and left a message on Frankie's answering machine, then unmoored the fishing boat and hopped onboard. The chugging engine filled the damp morning air with petroleum. The fog was thick enough so that his fumes stayed with him until he got out into the fat part of the harbor. He could feel the space on either side of him and make out the upcoming harbor lights, colorful pinpoints in the mist. He started to outrun his own fumes and drank in the smell of fish and water, slowing to ease his way through the break walls, keeping well between the green and red light towers. There was some chop outside the harbor. He trimmed his motors as best he could, but there was no escaping a rough ride to Canada. Halfway over, the sun poked its orange rim over the starboard horizon. The fog began to melt and soon there was nothing in sight but water and sky and the weakened sun glaring down at the fishing boat through a high haze.

  His face and hands were numb by the time he saw the island, and the thin curving line of smoke confirmed his suspicion. On the north side of the island there was a small inlet with a channel deep enough to get through if your motors were trimmed all the way up. Bucky saw his own boat and eased up next to it on the other side of the single dock. On a rise in the lee of some towering blue spruce was a snug cabin that was the source of the smoke.

  Bucky climbed the winding trail of pine needles. In the glare of one of the small square windows, he saw the flicker of a face and the black barrel of a gun. When he got there, he stood for a minute on the porch, listening, then let himself in. Scott looked up from a bowl of cold cereal and a mug of coffee. The black-barreled twelve gauge rested up against the sink.

  "Christ, I couldn't believe it, Bucky," Scott said. "I close my eyes and there he is, lying there in all that blood."

  Bucky went to the stove, took a chipped mug off its hook, poured himself a cup, and sat down.

  "You didn't do that, did you?" he said. He'd told himself he wouldn't ask, but found that he couldn't help it. The question just came out.

  Looking hard into Scott's eyes he could see the answer, horror at the thought of harming his own father.

  "How many times did I tell him we needed more security?" Scott said, slamming his palm on the table.

  "Carl at the office, that's it, which is great unless Carl is fixing the boiler and some nutcase walks in through the front doors with an Uzi.

  "Huh," Scott said, huffing out something like a laugh. "The lodge? Who didn't have an eye scan done?

  There had to be a hundred people who could have popped that lock and walked away. If it was even locked. He wouldn't listen, Buck, and they got him. Of course they got him. It's a miracle they didn't get him before."

  "They think it was you," Bucky said.

  "Because I took off?" Scott said, casting a wild look Bucky's way. "That's stupid."

  "And your knife."

  "Stupid," Scott said, shaking his head.

  Bucky nodded.

  "They got Milo and they got him," Scott said. "I figured I was next. So I got out of there. I didn't even tell Emily. They'll leave her alone if she doesn't know anything.

  "Christ, it took long enough for you to find me. You getting old?"

  Half a grin broke out on Scott's face and Bucky smiled back.

  "I don't know if it was the union," Bucky said, his face drooping again.

  "Bucky, you know it wasn't me."

  "I know that."

  Bucky looked down at his coffee and took a swig. In the bottom, the grinds swirled like black smoke before settling back down. He looked up and spoke in a quiet, even tone.

  "I saw man tracks that night," he said. "In the snow. About a size thirteen. First thing I thought of was Thane. He was supposed to meet your dad and I figured they finished late and he took a walk. When I saw what happened, I knew whoever killed your dad made those tracks. The snow covered them by then and the goddamn police have their heads up their asses."

  "Thane?" Scott said.

  Bucky looked at him.

  "He's like a brother," Scott said.

  "Crazier things happen," Bucky said.

  "Did you tell the police?"

  "Sure," he said. "But they think I'm trying to protect you."

  Scott sat for a while, staring at the floor before he said, "What do we do, Buck?"

  "I'll be honest," he said. "I've been thinking about it and if he did do it--"

  "Maybe he didn't, right? I can't believe it. Size thirteen could have been anyone."

  "Maybe," Bucky said. "But if he did, or if he's somehow hooked up with the union, he'll make a mistake."

  "I can't just keep sitting here," Scott said, bursting from his seat and pacing the floor.

  "When you're on to a big whitetail," Bucky said, following Scott with his eyes, "the closer you get, the more wary he gets. When you get in range--you know this--you just stop. You don't move a muscle. Then, just when you think he might have given you the slip, he'll twitch an ear, or flick his tail. Then you got him."

  Bucky looked out of the small square window. The sky was full gray now, the clouds churning their way to New England.

  "No," Bucky said, finishing his coffee, "we stay still, and we watch.

  "He'll slip."

  35

  FOR KING CORP, opening day of deer season had always been a holiday. The night before, there was a big dinner for the partners and the most important clients. Wives were invited and welcome to hunt. Between the lodge and several renovated outlying farmhouses, there was room for almost a hundred. The dinner would be held in the massive hall that opened out onto the water, its three-story beams stretched to the distant roof like one of the great European cathedrals. Jessica was using the annual event for a coronation, that party she had talked about having. Invitations went out to all the most important bankers and CEOs of the major retailers and construction companies across the country. The fleet of four Citation Xs was scheduled to bring the VIPs in and out. James's old friends, the ones from his earlier days as a sewage line contractor, were dropped from the list, and only the most important people inside the company were invited.

  "You didn't invite Vitor?" I said, looking over the list at the breakfast table. "He makes the white lasagna."

  "I thought lamb chops," Jessica said, laying fried eggs onto two plates and carrying them across the kitchen to Tommy and me. "Roses for the centerpieces."

  "Can I go?" Tommy asked.

  "Drink your orange juice, pal. It's a thing for work, but in a couple of years, you're gonna be old enough to hunt and you'll be right there with me," I said, reaching over and mussing his hair. I looked over the top of the list at Jessica. "How could you not invite Vitor?"

  "People don't eat pasta that late anymore," she said, setting the plate down. "This is about you, us, our friends. James's gone."

  I scowled at her, glancing at Tommy.

  "What?" she said. "Tommy and I talked about it. It's like the Lion King, the circle of life. Everything that lives, also has to die."

  I winced and shook my head.

  "You take care of the hunting," she said, patting my back. "I'll handle the food and the guest list. It's too late now anyway."

  She pinched the list and tugged it out of my hand. I picked up my fork. She sat down at the computer she kept on a desk in the corner of the kitchen to check her e-mails. Jessica didn't eat breakfast.

  "I could call him," I said, wiping up the last of the yolk with a piece of toast. "I like Vitor."

  Jessica kept on typing, scanning the screen.

  "Get your book bag, Tommy," she said.

  I sighed, got up, and put my dishes in the sink. Our bags were packed and waiting at the front door. I loaded up the H2 that Jessica bought to replace my Escalade. When I told her we were ready, she came out with her hands jammed into a brown shearling coat and whistling, Tommy in tow to be dropped at school. Going up the driveway, I let him sit on my lap and steer the Hummer. It was a busy day at the lodge. There were nonstop questions for both Jessica and me, and we set up our base of operations in the conference room of the main entrance of the lodge with the staff coming and going like bees.

  There was also Garden State business to attend to. A day couldn't go by without some kind of equipment or material mysteriously disappearing. A half million dollars' worth of copper piping, metal scrap as good as cash. Two dump trucks. A dozen generators. One day we even lost ten Porta Pottis. Jessica assured me that we were getting our cut from any leakage, and I assured my employees that it was just part of doing business downstate.

  It was sometime after lunch that I realized a lot of the unanswered questions about the opening day hunt could only be answered by Bucky. Which hunters were riding in which trucks? What time did the first drive begin? Were we serving coffee in the European tower-blinds?

  "Have you seen him?" I asked Marty, the lodge manager whom James had lured away from the RitzCarlton in Naples, Florida. Marty shrugged and said he hadn't. Not all day.

  "Have someone find him," I said. "We need some answers on this stuff. And Marty, make sure there's a dozen yellow roses in the master bedroom."

  "Not red?"

  "You ever smell a red rose? They stink. Do yellow."

  I didn't see Marty again until four o'clock. I was downstairs in the larger group conference room with Dave Wickersham, one of the architects who had helped design the lodge. Dave had his notepad out and a schematic of the room on the table. I pointed to the area where I wanted the treadmills and the plasma screens. Since I was running the company and Cascade was company property, I could do as I pleased, and I intended to make the place my own.

  "I always wondered why James never did this," Dave said, marking it down.

  "Why walk on a treadmill when you can walk outdoors?" I said. "Remember?"

  "God, those damn hikes," Dave said, shaking his head. "Up and down and through that goddamn swamp over by the Hughes place.

  "But," he said, after looking off into space for a moment, "I guess you got to see things."

  "You can burn more calories on a treadmill," I said, "and you can see the TV."

  Dave looked at me over the tops of his glasses for a second, then said, "That's right."

  Marty came down the stairs and I asked Dave if we were all set. We were. He left and I turned to Marty. His eyes darted here and there.

  "He's not here," Marty said.

  "Who? Bucky? What do you mean, not here?"

  Marty shook his head and said, "I looked all over the place, the fish shack, the duck barn, all over. No one's seen him and then I went to his house. His Suburban wasn't there, but I asked Judy and she said he's down in Endicott on a hunt."

  "What hunt?"

  "Some old friends. Harold Sincibaugh's crew."

  I choked down a laugh. "It's opening day tomorrow."

  "I guess he wasn't thinking," Marty said, wringing his hands.

  "Get his ass on the phone," I said, raising my voice.

  "They don't have one," Marty said. "I asked."

  "Where's Russel? Luke?"

  "With him."

  "Fuck. Who is here, Marty? This is your fucking staff too. Isn't it?"

  "James never let me get involved with Bucky's guides."

  "And did James have to spoon-feed Bucky on every fucking detail? It's opening fucking day! We've got the dinner tonight."

  "I don't know," Marty said, taking a step back. "Maybe he didn't think he was supposed to come."

  "Marty," I said, closing the gap between us and gripping his shoulder, "you get someone down there and get his ass back here tonight. I mean tonight."

  "You want me to go?"

  "You can't go, we've got the dinner. Get someone. Who's left? Who in this place isn't related to Bucky?"

  "Adam could go."

  "Good, whoever," I said, letting him go with a little shove. "Just get him back here."

  Marty hurried off. I went upstairs into the great hall where the dinner would be and told Jessica about Bucky.

  "I think white, don't you?" she asked, holding a red and a white napkin up in the light.

  "He puts everyone in their stands," I said. "He keeps everyone together when they move through the woods or the whole thing gets gummed up."

  "Honey," she said, standing up and stroking my cheek with the back of her fingers. "No one cares. They can sleep in."

  "Guys are going to want to hunt."

  "Who? Chris Tognola from Deutsche Bank? Howard Reese? Tim Kingston? Please."

  "Jim Higgins will."

  "The Bass Pro Shop guy," she said, clucking her tongue. "People come here to see the lodge."

  She put the napkins down and glanced around, making sure we were alone. Her eyes narrowed. She lowered her voice and said, "If you're worried about what people think, maybe you should get rid of people who don't do their jobs. And, if they're living on company property, maybe they shouldn't be."

  "Bucky?"

  "Anyone who tries to make you look bad. Anyone who thinks you're not running this place," she said, moving a wineglass to the other side of the plate. "You let people snub you and this won't last long. Kick him out."

  "His house?"

  She gave me a grim smile with those teeth, put her finger in my chest, and said, "The house belongs to the company. You run the company. What did James used to say? Eat or be eaten, right? You're at the top of the food chain now."

  "Judy's there," I said.

  "I got thrown out of my house," she said with a shrug, huffing on a spoon and wiping it on her sleeve.

  "I survived."

  She put the spoon down, looked at me, and asked, "What did you do when you played football and somebody took a cheap shot at you? Forget about it until they did it again?"

  She turned and walked away in the direction of the kitchen. I watched her disappear, my face hot and pressure building in my brain. I jogged downstairs to the parking garage where I found Adam wearing his Carhartt jacket, jeans, and big rubber boots climbing into his pickup truck. I got in on the other side.

  "You going with me?" he asked. His round cheeks, which were always bright pink, turned red, and his eyes widened behind their wire-framed glasses.

  "We're not going to Endicott," I said. "Take me to Bucky's."

  "His house?" Adam said, and he started the engine.

  36

  BUCKY'S WIFE, JUDY, was in the trophy room, reading a book by the fire. Bucky's mounts stared down with their dead glass eyes. A stone sheep. A monster Cape buffalo. Two big turkeys in flight. There were dozens of animals from six of the seven continents.

  "Judy," I said, "I'm sorry, but you have to leave."

  "What do you mean?" she said. She was a quiet woman with frizzy brown hair and glasses. The kind you would expect behind the desk of a public library.

  "You have to leave," I said. "Adam will help you pack some things. I only have ten minutes, so you'll have to hurry."

  "What? What happened?"

  "Bucky's fired," I said. "This is a company house. I can't allow ineptitude any more than James did. If Bucky did this to James on opening day, James would have done the same thing."

  I spoke quietly, but with force. When I saw her hesitation, I raised my voice. "I mean now!"

  She looked at Adam, whose cheeks were now shiny and purple. Adam clasped his hands together and stared hard at the mud on his big rubber boots. She got the idea and twelve minutes later she and Adam were loading several bulging suitcases into Judy's truck while I talked on my cell phone and pretended not to watch.

  Adam and I watched her truck wind down the drive and disappear out onto Swamp Road. My heart was pumping fast and hard. I could see Jessica's smile in my mind's eye, the one she shared with Johnny G.

  "We still got that big backhoe out in back of the duck barn?" I asked Adam.

  "Yeah," he said.

  "You know how to run that thing, right?"

  I knew he did. I'd seen him and Bucky tearing down various barns and old farmhouses over the years as James consumed his neighbors, slowly expanding the preserve.

  He nodded.

  "Get in," I said. "I'll drive."

  I took him over to the barn and out in back where the machine rested in the tall brown grass.

  "Take it over to Bucky's," I said.

  "Well, what for?"

  "You're going to knock it down."

  "Bucky's house? I can't do that," he said, his mouth hanging open, his eyes wincing.

  "Then you're fired," I said. "You can get out too."

  Adam had an old farmhouse on the property, where he lived with his young wife. She had diabetes. A drain on the company's health insurance.

  "Or else you can knock it down and take his job."

  "Me?"

  "Am I not speaking English?" I asked.

  "But it's his house."

  "It's the company's house," I said, my voice rising. "I run the company. Either you tear it down by midnight or your place will be next. How's that? Are you getting me now?"

  Adam backed away from me toward the machine. He climbed up into the seat, keeping his eyes on me. I got into his pickup and followed him as the machine bounced along the shoulder of Swamp Road, back down toward Bucky's. He sat on the machine outside Bucky's house for a while with the old rusty exhaust pipe pumping crud into the air.

  Finally, I looked at my watch and hopped down out of the truck. I shooed him down off the machine, raised the front scoop, and drove it straight into the corner of the house. I backed up and did it again, three times, until the roof sagged to the ground.

  I got down and, raising my voice above the chugging motor, said, "You got that now? You fucking get it?"

  Adam licked his lips and nodded. He waited until I was well away before he climbed up, then he rotated the machine around and began pounding down the roof with the bucket. Once he got going, he worked with the skill of a mason, touching just the right spots to bring everything crashing down. Glass shattered. Wood splintered. Concrete popped and grated. The day was fading, but as I pulled away in his truck I could see his red face glistening in the rearview mirror like a beacon. The guests were starting to arrive and drinks were being served at the long mahogany bar outside the massive great hall where banquets were held. People stood clustered together or sat in the furniture groupings of mission oak and dark leather. There was a festive buzz in the air and as Jessica and I walked arm in arm into the comfortably enormous space, people came to us to smile and shake hands and offer their congratulations.